


putting the dog to sleep

by corgasbord



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Slight Canon Divergence, gratuitous historical references of varying accuracy, gudaguda 2 spoilers i guess, incest shippers do not interact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-05 16:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18832522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corgasbord/pseuds/corgasbord
Summary: Nobukatsu goes back on his word again and again and again, history repeating itself, because repeating his mistakes is the closest he can ever come to turning back time until they remember what it was like to be happy.-Or, Oda Nobukatsu has a long and intimate relationship with betrayal.





	putting the dog to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> i got emotions over gudaguda 2 and was finally able to get this out of my system in the wake of finals. i really love the oda siblings... their relationship manages to be equal parts funny and poignant and i wish more people could focus on them without being weird. (inb4 my worst fear happens and a future gudaguda event or something makes it weird, too)
> 
> anyway, i hope there are other nobukatsu likers out there who enjoy messy reworks of historical and fate canon mashed into one introspective mess, since that's basically what this is. it's a little experimental, so since it's from nobukatsu's pov i address nobunaga as "aneue", a very archaic, polite and intimate way of addressing one's older sister. that's how he refers to her in the original jp version, anyway.

The first time that Nobukatsu betrays his sister is hardly a step over the threshold of adulthood.

Their father is dead. As his oldest child, Aneue should have the right to succeed him. Nobukatsu knows this. It doesn’t matter that Aneue is a woman, because she is stronger and smarter than he’ll ever be.

The elder members of the Oda clan think differently. His own mother thinks differently. They come up with all sorts of reasons Aneue is unfit to become the family head. _She’s a delinquent. She disrespected her father at his funeral. She will only further disrespect his station, should she inherit it._ They only ever mention Aneue’s gender when they think Nobukatsu isn’t around to hear, but he knows. He knows that being a man is only the reason he has more support from their family than his sister ever will. He knows that they will treat him as her superior even though he could never hope to even become her equal.

It leaves an especially bitter taste in his mouth, then, that they only need to tell him _overthrow Nobunaga_ once for him to make the attempt.

It’s a failure hardly memorable enough to go down in history, but he will never forget the look on his mother’s face when she begs Aneue to spare his worthless life. He doesn’t see his sister’s face. She’s turned her back on him already.

“Leave,” she says, quiet, thick with venom. “Quickly, before I change my mind. The next time I see you in my territory, I won’t be so generous.”

Nobukatsu thinks about how scarcely a few years have gone by since the last time she sat with him over tea. A little longer ago than that, he would be the sole audience to her one-man recreation of “Atsumori,” and a little longer ago than that she would chase him around the estate with bugs cupped in her hands, filling the garden with her laughter and his screams.

When he runs from her again, this time, he knows that it is no longer a game.

-

The second time that Nobukatsu betrays his sister, he tells himself that it’s for her own good.

The logic behind it is simple: kicking a wasps’ nest will set a swarm of angry insects upon anyone nearby. The person who kicked the nest, too, will be stung. Karmic retribution for upsetting the natural order of things.

Aneue had talked a lot about the natural order of things. “A man’s life is but fifty years. Compared to the life of the heavens, it is but a dream… an illusion,” she would either say or sing, depending on her mood. “Listen well, Nobukatsu: do not waste those fifty years. Spend them recklessly, boldly, however you wish, and do it all knowing that you will not get them back.”

He doesn't understand everything she talked about. He's incompetent, after all. If there is something he understands, though, it is that the most reckless, bold, brilliant thing that he can do with his fifty years is give them to someone else. Aneue probably doesn’t want them; he can only imagine that she’d liken it to spitting in her eye now that she’s already spared him once, but she will overcome it. She will step over his corpse in the same way she’s stepped over others and maybe one day, finally, she won’t have to leave any more bodies in her wake.

Yes, that’s what he wants. All he ever wanted in the end was peace, wasn’t it?

Even so, when he faces her, he does so with all of his meager strength, because anything less would be an insult to her. He fights her as though he really might kill her, as if he ever had a chance of bringing her down. 

(He knew from the start that he didn’t. He knew from the start that she was always meant to become something and he wasn’t and that was fine. Suemori is burning around him and his beloved big sister hates him and he will never be her or anything more than the bloody dirt that she walks on, and it’s fine.)

It ends with her standing above him, one foot planted on his chest and the barrel of her gun inches from his face. He doesn’t know what kind of expression she’s making. He keeps his eyes fixed on the sky, dark with smoke. There would be nothing to see there even if the stars were out, but he can’t bring himself to look at her.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” she says.

Her voice is so cold that he almost thinks it could chase away the flames she set upon his castle. He swallows hard, throat burning with bile, and wonders what he’s supposed to say to that. An apology wouldn’t satisfy her. Not the second time, and not if he doesn’t mean it.

He settles on a hoarse, “I know.”

“Is that really all you have to say for yourself?” she asks. 

“I don’t know what else needs to be said.” He closes his eyes because he can feel them watering, now. “You’ve defeated me. It’s- it’s like you’ve always told me, right? It can’t be helped.”

“I see.” There’s a pause, then a click of her matchlock. “Very well, then.”

It’s so impersonal and so very like her that something like a smile wobbles around the corners of Nobukatsu’s mouth. He passes half of his fifty years into her hands and says, “I leave the rest to you, Aneue.”

Her response is the harsh, echoing _bang_ of a gunshot, and then—

Nothing.

-

When they were children, betrayal was little more than a plot point in game of pretend.

Aneue loved stories. She wasn’t a studious girl by any means, but she read whatever caught her attention and became fascinated with drama. She would never say it outright, but she was most invested in tales of heroism, no matter how tragic they were. Tragedy, too, was part of the natural order of things—a natural order they were too young to understand yet, at thirteen and eleven.

“Men, to arms!” she shouted, lifting her too-large bamboo practice sword up high. “This country will be mine!”

“Y-Yes!” Nobukatsu scrambled up close, his grip on his own shinai loose with sweat. “Then, I will do whatever it takes to support you, Aneue!”

She swatted him on the back of the head. “No, no, no. I told you already, you’re my enemy this time.”

“Oh.” She had told him that, probably, but he’d forgotten, or maybe he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. “I like being your second-in-command, though…”

“Don’t whine. Every good story needs a little conflict,” she said. Her chin slotted itself between her thumb and forefinger in thought before revelation spread over her features. “Oh, I’ve got it. You can be my former second-in-command who backstabbed me!”

“Eh?” He blanched. “Backstab? But, Aneue, I’d never…”

“Well, of course not. And I’d beat you easily even if you did,” she said, and brought a hand up to muss his hair. “But this is just a game, all right? Don’t think about it too hard, it’ll be fun.”

He pursed his lips. “You’ll be okay if I’m not helping you win?”

“Who the hell do you think I am?” she asked. She was only a little taller than him, but when she straightened her back and raised her voice she was larger than life. “Listen up, Otouto! It doesn’t matter who stands against me. You have to fight for what you want even if the entire world is in your way, and if one day the world is my enemy, then so be it. I’d still win!”

He could only stare, slack-jawed with awe. This was how she had always been: arrogant, ambitious, unrelenting. Even as a young girl with little more than a practice weapon at her side, he was convinced that she really could take on the heavens themselves if she wanted to.

She pointed that weapon at him, reminding him that they were supposed to fight, and said, “Now, face me, traitor!”

So he did. He didn’t expect to be a match for her, so it was no surprise that it ended quickly with him disarmed and flat on the ground. She prodded his chest with the blunt tip of her shinai and crowed, “That’s what happens when you challenge me, fool.”

“Ah, oh no… I’ve been defeated…” Nobukatsu said, letting all of his muscles go slack.

Aneue raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You’re no good at acting. You have to put more feeling into it, you know?” She brought the back of her free hand to her forehead with a dramatic little toss of her hair. “How sad for you! To think that you could have had it all if you’d only remained at my side, but you threw all of that away because you thought I could be beaten. And now you’ve paid the ultimate price!”

It could be said that acting is the art of lying professionally, and Nobukatsu was never a good liar. Aneue excelled at it, though, just as much as she excelled at gloating after every easy victory. There was never a time where that bothered him, but when she stood above him to boast about how effortlessly she’d beaten him, he felt a pang of something hot and nauseating.

_Too easy,_ he realized, _I made it too easy._

He didn’t notice the way his leg lashed out and caught on one of hers until she was already halfway to the ground.

Her back hit the dirt with a _thud_ that he swore he could feel in his bones. “A-Aneue!” he gasped, struggling to his feet. Oh, he’d really done it now. Even if he hadn’t actually hurt her, she was going to yell at him for ruining the game, or maybe she’d even refuse to talk to him for the rest of the day. The thought alone made his heartbeat quicken with panic.

When he caught sight of her face, though, he went still. She didn’t look angry. For a moment, for the first time, her eyes were blown wide, mouth parted into the closest shape to stunned he’d ever seen.

It was gone faster than he could blink, replaced by halting, breathless laughter.

“My, look,” she wheezed, “look at how bold you’ve gotten! To think you would get so in character that you really would betray me…”

“I’m sorry, Aneue, I wasn’t thinking, I-” He fumbled for words to justify what he did, frantic, but Aneue hefted herself up, one hand raised to silence him.

“It can’t be helped,” she said. She dusted herself off with a few brisk swipes and reached for her shinai. “Not predicting that was my mistake. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“It won’t happen again,” he assured her, offering one nervous, unsteady hand to help her back up. 

Her gaze flitted between his face and his outstretched hand for a few seconds. “No, it won’t,” she finally agreed, reaching to take it. “Because…”

Then it was his own back against the dirt, the air knocked out of his lungs. Any attempts to catch his breath were thwarted by the fingers digging sharply into his sides.

“Nooo!” he squealed, trying in vain to shove Aneue off of him. “Ahaha- I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Puh, please have merceeheeheeee!”

Aneue was not a merciful person, though. She cackled, “Do you understand now, Otouto? There may come a time when you think you’ve won, but you’ll never beat me. You just can’t!”

She continued to tickle him until he was nearly purple in the face, and when all was said and done she brought him back to his feet again, giggling all the while. His first real attempt at betrayal ended there, before it even began. It was an offense that was hardly even considered an offense, one that the two of them would surely laugh about later.

Nobukatsu couldn’t have known, then, that he was lying when he said that he’d never do it again.

(The two of them are long past the point where they can laugh about it, now. Nobukatsu goes back on his word again and again and again, history repeating itself, because repeating his mistakes is the closest he can ever come to turning back time until they remember what it was like to be happy.)

-

The third time Nobukatsu betrays his sister is the first time he’s able to do so and look her in the eye.

His confidence is as borrowed as his life is in this form, but he’s going to stretch it to its limits. He’s not as good at it as Aneue is, of course, because Aneue’s better at everything. It’s difficult to keep his voice measured when he stares her down and calls her a fool, but there’s something rewarding about it. His chest swells with all the exhilaration of a child who’s learned how to say “no” with an accompanying stamp of his foot. He’s accomplished something, finally, Aneue will have to acknowledge him now—

But the feeling leaks out of him in dregs when sees something akin to sadness weighing down her gaze, and she gives him the only sincere apology that he’s ever heard from her irreverent mouth, even as she draws one of her matchlocks, even as she rejects him once again.

“Listen well, Nobukatsu. A man’s life is but fifty years. Compared with the life of the heavens, it is but a dream,” she says rather than sings, as she always did when she was at her most serious. “What makes humans so cool is that they shine brilliantly in what little time they have! Now, burn this sight into your eyes: the way the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, Oda Nobunaga, lives!”

Perhaps something about that lodges itself under his skin in a way that leaves him vulnerable. Hesitation must have rooted itself somewhere in his core and eaten away at the resolve he’d held close to his heart.

Or maybe, he realizes, he was destined to fail from the beginning. He’s incompetent, after all.

He can’t even feign surprise when she tears through his forces like it’s nothing. He doesn’t run when she approaches him, still armed. All he can do is stare at his shoes and lament, “I was still no match for you… Why am I always such a failure?” It’s a rhetorical question he knows she doesn’t have the answer to, so he laughs a little, self-deprecating. “Sometimes I wonder if we even share the same blood.”

He hears Aneue sigh. “Look, Nobukatsu, don't say that. The way things turned out… no one can be blamed for all of that. That was just the way the era was.”

“Ah…” Nobukatsu chews at the inside of his lip. “I guess you're right.”

_The way the era was._ Yes, he knows all too well that their family hadn’t been the only one caught up in territorial disputes. War was something normal back then, something the two of them had grown into. It would have been so much easier to point fingers at a person or a group. He could blame their father for leaving Aneue with undue burdens, or the Oda clan elders for challenging her and creating unnecessary conflict, or any number of things that took her away from him. The truth, though, was that none of them had started the fire. It had been burning since long before any of them were born.

It was easier when they were children because they were allowed to believe that war was a game and peace was their reality. It was easier before their father died, when all of the problems that Aneue caused were only trivial enough to get her smacked by an elder, when she still felt like his big sister.

The way the era was forced Aneue to adapt in order to survive. She became a warlord, pulled forward by her ambition until it consumed her. Nobukatsu remained the same weak child he’d always been.

In the end, that’s the main difference between them, he supposes. She grew up. He didn’t.

He inhales, deep and shaky. “Well… I’ve always wanted to put my life in your hands, Aneue,” he says, and it isn’t a lie. “Please do it gently, though. You know I’ve never been good with pain.”

“Very well.” She schools her expression again as she readies her matchlock. “Farewell, Nobukatsu.”

It’s cold, impersonal, just the same as he remembers. The fact that she still remains herself is a small comfort. He can’t help but smile as he closes his eyes and prepares for the inevitable.

He hears the harsh, echoing _bang_ of a gunshot, and then… nothing.

Moments later, shouts ring out from the people accompanying Aneue, equal parts jubilation and surprise. Confused, Nobukatsu opens his eyes. “E-Eh? Aneue?”

She holsters her gun with a deep sigh. “Well, I’ve always been pretty lenient when it comes to family. I suppose it’s just my nature.”

Nobukatsu hardly registers whatever Aneue’s Master is cheering in the background. For a moment, he almost can’t process that there’s anyone else present at all. The Demon Pillar’s promise to him and the consequences of his failure carry little weight in comparison to the realization that sinks into him and settles bone-deep.

_She… never did hate me, did she?_

Something in him fractures. Tears pool in his eyes, spill down his cheeks like blood let from a reopened wound. Unconsciously, he lurches forward with a choked call of _“Aneue!”_ and all but collapses into her smaller body, heaving sobs against her shoulder. “Aneue, I… I…!”

“Hey-!” Aneue nearly stumbles, but balances herself with one hand on his upper arm. “Don’t cling to me like that, it’s disgusting! Besides, we still have a final boss to deal with!”

There are murmurings from the others, or at least they sound like murmurings to Nobukatsu’s ears. He’s not paying attention. Instead he takes advantage of the fact that despite her words, Aneue has yet to push him away, and blurts, “I’m sorry!”

“What?” She goes stiff, puzzled. “This isn’t the time for that, you idiot. You can start apologizing for the mess you made after we clean it up!”

“Not that,” he says, “I meant- I meant everything.” … No, not everything, not his betrayals. He committed those for her. Even now, he won’t apologize for having righteous intentions, so he clarifies, “For failing you all the time, even back then.”

Aneue is stock still. Somewhere behind him, a guttural howl rises from the Demon Pillar, and there’s cursing and footsteps and gunfire, but Aneue doesn’t move, not immediately. Nobukatsu doesn’t let go, either. He clutches her cape as though it’s the only thing anchoring his feeble existence.

A few beats pass before she says, quieter than he’s ever heard her, “You really are an idiot.” The hand on his upper arm twitches, lifts, settles awkwardly on his back. Once, twice. Then it curls in the back of his collar and tugs, and at last he allows himself to be dislodged and brushed aside so that she can step forward. She doesn’t look back at him as she continues, “That wasn’t something you needed to apologize for. I already punished you, yes? Consider that your forgiveness.”

With that, she runs ahead, sword drawn, and calls out for her niece, leaving Nobukatsu in the dust once again.

Nobukatsu sniffs, long and ugly and wet, and wipes at his face with gloved hands. He wants to run after her, to take up his sword next to her, but he knows that he would only serve to get in the way. He was always at his best when he was supporting her from the sidelines.

There’s hesitation, too, when he thinks that he’ll probably be unable to remain here once the Demon Pillar is vanquished.

He wonders if that’s occurred to her, that her sparing his life will have meant nothing in the end. Nothing that happened here will hold any meaning to anyone except for him, and he’ll be dead soon, to his sister and to the world at large. Maybe she hasn’t realized that in rejecting him, she’s effectively killed him again.

Then again, this is what he wanted all along, isn’t it? To pass however many years of his life into her hands that he would need to pay off all his shortcomings.

He attempts to right himself, back straight, face halfway clean. There is little he can do now but watch her and her new comrades crush the last hope of a life he could have had with her, but because it’s her, he supposes he can accept it. Even if he is no longer allowed a presence even in her conscious thoughts, even if he can never see her again, it’s a better ending than he could’ve hoped for. A fitting ending, he thinks, for the foolish little brother who loved his amazing big sister as much as he envied her.

Knowing that she will not weep for him when he disappears, he says once more, “I leave the rest to you, Aneue.”

-

When he awakens to the glare of blinding fluorescents, bright orange behind his shut eyelids, he can’t recall how many times he’s betrayed his sister. In fact, he doesn’t remember much of anything at all.

He would never forget the sound of Aneue’s voice, though. “Oi, you awake?”

His eyes snap open. White light floods into them, and he blinks rapidly, vision blurring as it adjusts. “Ah- Aneue?”

“Oh, good. I wasn’t sure if this was going to work.”

A fuzzy black silhouette is starting to take shape above him. It grows sharper, more defined with each second that passes until he sees his sister leaning over him. Sensations, too, trickle back into his awareness. He can tell that he’s lying on a mattress and that he’s in a remarkably sterile-looking room, though he can’t tell much else.

Questions hang on his tongue, jumbled. He wants to ask where he is, or why he’s here, but what comes out instead is, “I’m- I died. I should be dead.”

“You should be,” she agrees, all too casual. She sits up on the edge of the bed. “Well, technically you are, I guess. But so am I. We’re both Servants now.”

She doesn’t need to explain to him what that means. This form has imbued him with all of that knowledge already. There’s much he doesn’t understand, though, and trying to sift through all of the information in his head is giving him a headache.

“But I… how?” he asks. He brings a hand to his forehead and rubs to soothe the throb behind his eyes. “I don’t get it. Someone like me… I don’t know what I did to deserve-”

She cuts him off. “Dumbass. It’s not a matter of whether you deserved it. You should know already why you’re here, shouldn’t you?”

Nobukatsu’s brows knit. He closes his eyes again to shut out the light and focus on the thoughts tumbling through his brain. Everything has come to him in these drawn-out seconds in bits and pieces, and when he concentrates he feels fragments of _something_ slipping like sand through his fingers, incomplete. He remembers clearly that Aneue killed him. He doesn’t remember what came after—only that there was an after to begin with, like a certainty that he dreamt while asleep, but the details have all fallen through the cracks of his subconscious.

“I don’t,” he says, grimacing. “I still don’t get it. I’m sorry.”

“I see.” She goes quiet. His eyes remain shut tight, so he can’t see what kind of face she’s making, but when she speaks up again her tone doesn’t betray a single emotion. “Well, it can’t be helped, then. Basically, you’re here because I fished you out of my Saint Graph. Don’t worry about the details.”

That jolts him right up onto his elbows. “You- Huh?”

“I just told you not to think too hard about it,” she says. She reaches over and flicks him on the forehead. “You and I share blood, you know? Our cores are almost one and the same. Rebuilding yours using mine was a simple matter.”

That doesn’t make much sense to him to begin with, but what makes even less sense is, “But… but why?”

“Quit asking stupid questions. You wanted another chance to make yourself useful, right?”

He fixes her with a blank stare. “Useful” is not a word he’s ever thought to use to describe himself. “Useful” could refer to anything from a weapon to a common dog to the rag she uses to shine her shoes, but not him. Aneue has always loved the practical and discarded the obsolete, and if she killed him then he could only have fallen into the latter category.

“I- of course,” he finally says, “of course I do, Aneue, but I’m, well. You know.” He waves a hand over himself, because that should be an explanation on its own.

She swats him on the head this time with the back of her hand. The action startles him enough that he falls flat to the bed again with a whimper. “Don’t be a fool. I won’t allow quitter talk from anyone who shares my blood,” she says. “Besides, who cares if you’re weak? This isn’t a place where that kind of thing matters. I have a retainer talented enough to find a use for just about anyone.”

“Oh.” Nobukatsu isn’t sure what to say to that, or to any of this, really. This is the closest Aneue has come to providing encouragement since they were both teenagers, and that understanding in itself is enough to make his eyes water. “Then I, um…”

The moment passes all too quickly. Aneue rises to her feet and turns, cape fluttering behind her with the motion. “Come on, now. We have a lot of work ahead of us,” she says, and without any further fanfare she strides towards the door.

“Ah, Aneue, wait up!” He scrambles off of the bed, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. “Hang on, I’m coming, I’m coming!”

There are still questions that sit unanswered, for now. He wants to know what it is that she thinks he could possibly do for her. He wants to know why she had been the one to pull him back out of his grave and tell him that his work was not yet finished, as though she hadn’t killed him in the first place. More than anything else, he wants to know if the part of her that used to call him “Otouto” still exists somewhere, buried behind the walls she put up to defend herself from the cruel world they lived in.

Yet she continues to walk forward, ever-uncompromising, and so he is left to shove those questions into the back of his mind and run—not away from her, this time, but following in her footsteps, determined not to be left behind again.

**Author's Note:**

> i based some of the canon dialogue off of a fan translation of gudaguda 2 i read, since i still haven't forgiven the localization for butchering the tone. their parting was supposed to be bittersweet, not funny! the part where i let nobu be a little affectionate was entirely self-indulgent, though.
> 
> some additional tidbits:  
> \- "otouto" basically just means "little brother" and i thought it'd be cute if she called him that when they were younger...  
> \- nobukatsu did, in fact, try to betray nobunaga once before the battle of inogahara (where he was killed), and was only spared by his mother begging for his life.  
> \- nobunaga didn't actually set suemori castle on fire, but she also didn't kill nobukatsu personally like fate says she did, so i figured i could afford a dramatic flair.  
> \- i added the end scene during revision because leaving it with the scene before felt too... bleak, i suppose? and i wanted nobukatsu to have a happy ending. he deserves it after everything! i basically used the excuse gudaguda 3 did to bring him back - nobunaga uses data from her own saint graph to restore his. 
> 
> anyway, if any of y'all enjoyed this, kudos and comments would be great! fellow gudaguda fans rise up


End file.
